Following a few years of game-play over fifty-four sessions, our intrepid band of adventurers (the Sihedron) went up against the Runelord of Greed and defeated him after surprising him in the "Eye of Avarice". We began Spires of Xin-Shalast last session, though we only went so far as to perform a successful Harrow reading and discretely reconnoitered the Pinnacle of Avarice.
We started off this session by buffing ourselves to the nines and then circumventing a quintet of lamia harridans to trigger the opening of a portal by touching a Runeforged weapon to a crystal mirror held by a statue of Karzoug. We next appeared inside the Eye of Avarice; surprising Karzoug, a huge blue dragon and another human wizard who I believe was an apprentice named Khalib. During the surprise round, my character cast antimagic field on himself and had his familiar carry him over to the Runelord's side. With all his magical defenses down, our rogue succeeded in hitting Karzoug with a devastating ranged sneak attack, followed by another arrow from our ranger. I was looking forward to the prospect of assaulting Karzoug with a tanglefoot bag (hey, not much else I could do right?) but our monk charged forward and hit the Runelord with a vital strike; ending Varisa's would-be conqueror's life. The Dragon proved a little more time-consuming to defeat while Khalib fell to the same antimagic/monk-attack combo as Karzoug.
And then five lamia harridans and six rune giants crashed our little party in the Eye of Avarice. The Battle of the Pinnacle will continue next session...
Awesome!
Thanks. =)
Not out of it yet apparently!
Nope. We opted to circumvent all of the Pinnacle's defenders to try locating/striking at Karzoug first while we had the element of surprise on our side. Paid off well it seems; he was the first casualty of the final module. We sort of have a thing for starting at the end of an adventure and working our way backwards; we did the exact same thing with Mokmurian at Jorgenfist. Cautious, painstaking and thorough reconnaissance is the best weapon it seems. >=]
What are the chances of making it out alive, or is this the last stand of the forlorn hope?
I'd judge our chances of getting out at pretty good. We've already taken down two über-wizards, a blue dragon, five harridan honour guards and one of six rune giants. The remaining five rune giants are caught in an impenetrable smoke cloud thanks to my familiar having opened an eversmoking bottle we found in Runeforge. It gives us added cover and time to outmanoeuvre the giants. We jokingly call it "taking a smoke break". Only the monk has suffered significant damage so far.
So all we've got left is five injured rune giants, two healthy rune giants, eight storm giants, sixteen cloud giants, twelve more harridans, a dozen denizens of Leng and a heavily armored human woman. No problem, right? =D